Living in Lockdown – collecting Covid-19 community stories

The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre needs your help to create a new archive – Living in Lockdown.

We want to make a collection which reflects the experiences of people from Wiltshire and Swindon as they live through the Covid-19 pandemic.

This crisis will be closely studied by future generations who will turn to the archives to discover how we made sense of this life changing experience. And this is where we need the public’s help. We want you to make a record of your experiences during lockdown – you might already have begun to do this, or this appeal might prompt you to begin a diary, write a poem, make a scrapbook, or a piece of artwork.

We want you to think about creating something future generations can use that shows how our personal and working lives have been transformed by this global crisis. Many of us already have personal archives – old family photos, letters, news clippings – so now is the time to add your story and make a creative response to challenging times.

As well as your own response to living in lockdown we would like people to keep hold of ephemera – leaflets, newsletters, posters, flyers – which can also be added to our Local Studies collections.

Whatever your circumstance or experiences it is your stories that we want. Visit the WSHC website for more details.